Image has always been very important to Steve Wynn, who, love him or hate him, has repeatedly redefined what a Las Vegas resort could or should be. When Encore was about to come online, he did not want what he perceived to be an eyesore -- and a symbol of failure -- to be the Strip view from his new luxury property, nor the background to his publicity shots.
Hence, the famous New Frontier marquee that once flashed "Cold Beers and Dirty Girls," was removed in December 2008 at the behest of the casino magnate, who supplied the manpower for its deconstruction. ELAD Las Vegas, the owners of the New Frontier site who'd planned to build a version of New York's famous Plaza hotel there, did not stand in his way -- why would they, when Wynn was offering to pick up the tab for something they'd be forced to remove some day? Steve was given permission to remove the old marquee, and so it came to pass.
For some reason we couldn't get to the bottom of at the time, the Neon Museum didn't become involved in the whole process until fairly late in the day, and they didn't get the whole sign; rather, the nascent museum was donated just four of the letters, to spell out NEON, plus a star. It was a massive sign, with those letters standing at about 15 feet tall. The museum did at least get the complete sign from the back of the property -- a smaller one that used to sit on what was then called Industrial Road.
The swift demise of the New Frontier sign was not the only instance of Steve Wynn asserting his influence in the neighorhood. In 2009, a company that sought to bring the "Dinner in the Sky" concept to Sin City, attempted to gain permission to use the New Fronter, only to find their plans thwarted when Wynn, in conjunction with fellow interested party Boyd Gaming, with its Echelon project, argued that a 160-foot-in-the-air dining gimmick didn't belong in the vicnity of multibillion-dollar resort-casinos. (The airborne restaurant did operate out of a few temporary locations in Las Vegas, and even made the cover of the LVA newsletter one month, but we've heard nothing about it for a long time and the website appears to be long defunct.)
